EEOC COMING AFTER OVERLY BROAD SEVERANCE AGREEMENTS

The folks over at Constangy, Brooks, et al. law firm put out a very helpful blog that we follow religiously.  If you like to use civil rights laws to challenge undesirable management practices, we recommend you spend a few minutes reading through their post entitled, “EEOC’s ‘Not-So-Sweet Six’ Priorities, For 2024 And Beyond.” It will give you a good idea of the kind of cases EEOC is actually looking for to make new legal precedent. Fort example, the law firm summarized the EEOC’s targeting of severance agreements as follows: 

No. 5: Agency, schmagency, what’s the diff? The EEOC’s name for No. 5 is “Preserving Access to the Legal System.” In the past, this focused on retaliation for filing a charge, providing truthful testimony, or making an internal complaint about discrimination. Who could have a problem with that? But now the EEOC says it will be scrutinizing “overly broad waivers, releases, non-disclosure agreements, or non-disparagement agreements,” and certain mandatory arbitration provisions, in addition to garden-variety retaliation and record keeping violations. Gee. Sounds an awful lot like another agency that shall remain nameless that went off the deep end last March.

Remember, when you allege and prove an EEO violation you can get much stronger remedies than typically available when the contract, regulation or other laws are violated.